Tag: steam
Photos from the Beale Park Boat Show 2011
1894 Desvignes-built steam launch Pierette, photographed by Pete Williamson
Reader Pete Williamson has sent in some snaps of this year’s Beale Park Boat Show, including this shot of the wonderful steam launch Pierrette, and some entries for the kit section of the Water Craft amateur boatbuilding competition (Pete’s boat is the dark blue Selway-Fisher coble made from an Alec Jordan kit).
Also there’s something very unusual here: an entrant for the cordless challenge, in which entrants were asked to race each other around a course on the water using motor power derived from by battery driven cordless power tools. There are a couple of jolly pieces of video showing some of the entrants craft’ at Graham Neil’s weblog and at the Water Craft website. It makes you think, doesn’t it? At least some folks found a use for some old tools…
Finally, I’m not quite sure what the boat in this collection may be or who made it, but I remember being told that it contains a lot of old timber from somewhere, and thinking that the builder had done a nice job when I dropped in at the Barton Home Built Boat Rally meet at Barton Turf at Whitsun. I’ve posted some of my own photos of this craft taken at Barton below.
Thanks Pete!
Film of Nick Smith and pals timbering out the steam launch Puffin
This piece of YouTube film shows how Nick Smith and his colleagues timber out a clinker built hull using green oak steamed in a steam chest in Nick’s workshop.
It looks like damned hard work to me, but no-one can say the result isn’t worth the effort.
The only other thing I’ll say is that I edited this down from some film Nick sent over – and this will be the last time I’ll use Windows Live Movie Maker. It froze and crashed so many times I couldn’t count them, the only thing that got the software working each time was to go into the task manager and close it down that way. It quite spoiled my day – but hey, now we can all see how the professionals do this kind of thing (timber out a boat, I mean, not edit a YouTube clip!).
Nick comes from Devon, learned boatbuilding the traditional way and specialises in new builds in clinker and carvel for sail, motor and rowing power from 8ft to 28ft with a special emphasis on West Country style and design, and also takes on repairs and refits from 25ft to 50ft. These days he’s based in Hampshire, and can be contacted by email at nick_smith_boatbuilder@yahoo.com and by phone on 07786 693370.